A Trip To Whitehall

Liz and  had a trip up to Whitehall at the back end of last week. I'm a regular visitor, but I'd not appreciated that there was a rather nice statue of General Gordon outside MOD Main Building facing towards the Thames (perhaps to remind him of his days looking out at the Nile, waiting in vain for relief to arrive). It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I hope you'll excuse a picture of the good lady wife perched at the foot of the general's statue.

Not much to report on the modelling front at the moment, although the Egyptian rocket troops are almost finished and the last odd stands of Camel Corps troops have been delivered to my local expert painter, Nigel Cox, for him to work his magic. I should have some pics of his rather excellent paint jobs shortly.

The Mahdi of Sudan...

Colonial wargamers tend to be, in my experience, extremely well read on British and mperial troops and commanders, but less well so on their "native" opponents. The Sudan is no exception, and the vast majority of books that are readily available are written largely from the Imperial perspective. Worse still, hunting down many of the books and articles that were written at the time of the campaigns or shortly thereafter one finds that (understandably) they are almost entirely written in that style, and lump the Mahdi and his commanders into the generic role of "noble savage" (or noble wily savage in the case of Osman Digna), clever, cunning yet uneducated. Wherever possible I try to read both sides of the story when launching into a new wargaming period - for example, one of the most valuable books I obtained when I was running a Falklands 1982 campaign was Martin Middlebrook's account written from the Argentinean perspective - and this has been pretty tricky this time around. So it was with some happiness that I've recently picked up a copy of "The Mahdi and the Death of General Gordon", by Fergus Nicholl. I'm only part way into it but that part has covered the early life of Muhammad Ahmad in some considerable detail, and straight away has blown away some of my own preconceptions regarding the background to the campaigns in the Sudan. I'm sure the rest of the book will be just as edifying - I'll report back on it later.

As an aside - Google Books is an invaluable resource, isn't it? I've managed to download copyright-free versions of a whole host of boks writen about the campaigns in the 1880s and 1890s. I suspect Liz's new Kindle may find itself topping up with those in the not-too-distant future!

Reinforcements at Suakin

My latest painting project has been to finish off a battalion of Indian troops to support my "Suakin Front" contingent. The figures are Old Glory 15s, my first foray into figures from this manufacturer (I bought a few packs via a friend in the US, so you'll be seeing more from OG in the coming weeks). The figures are sold in packs of approximately 50 (in this case 51), which works out well given that I need 18-24 figures for a battalion using the rules on which I'm currently working.

So, how do these chaps compare with the Peter Pig figures  that make up the bulk of my armies? The answer is, IMHO, fairly well, but Martin Goddard's figures have a clear edge. I'm not entirely convinced by some of the poses (especially the one apparently leaping into space from a rock), and the comand figure selection isn't that helpful - a standard bearer would have been a useful addition, so in the fullness of time I may convert one of the prancing figures.

That said, the figures are decent, fairly well detailed and paint up well. they are not as slight as PP's but I guess that plays to the fearsome repuation of the Indian troops - they are, after all, over ten feet tall old boy!

A severe lack of enthusiasm meant I only painted up half of the pack, so I have another battalion's worth left to do (and then some Sudanese). But first on the stocks to finish will be the artillery support for my Camel Corps - more of these chaps later!

"Machine Rocket, War"

The latest addition to Her Majesty's forces currently engaged in the Sudan are a couple of Hale Rocket batteries (these are another of the military curiosities that attract me to the Sudan campaigns). The spin-stabilised Hale Rocket, launched from a trough (or Machine Rocket, War) was used by the Egyptian and British armies, but as far as I'm aware there isn't a currently model available in 15mm so I decided to scratch build a few. The tripod is made from florist's wire cut and bent to shape, with a slice of card for the trough. They aren't the epitomy of accuracy, since the tripod isn't quite the right shape, and the trough isn't "trough" shaped as I couldn't find any channel sections that suited, but it should be a simple job to replace if and when I do.

The crew are spares taken from the Essex maxim gun team (the maxims haveing been snaffled for my 1890s era troops. They are a little oversized when compared with the Peter Pig troops that make up the majority of my armies, but not overly so, and they fit in OK. I decided to fill in the relative sparsness of the bases with some ammunition crates and a few rockets.

Purists will of course point out the inaccuracy in the scarlet uniforms, but then again a fair proportion of my 1880s British troops are clad in scarlet, as you'll see when I post on the mounted and dismounted cavalry soon). So they are internally consistent if not strictly historically accurate (and I like them clad that way anyway!)

Finally, a fine illustration from our correspondent on the banks of the Nile, witnessing a live fire demonstration of the mighty Hale!

That covers the Hale rockets for the British. All being well I should have some Peter Pig Egyptian artillery crew arriving in the post soon, and so Hicks Pasha can have his own rockets available in a couple of weeks :)

A New Arrival

I'm a naval wargamer at heart which is probably why I find the Sudan so appealing - gunboats and naval brigades all over the place :) One of my early jobs in this project was the constrction of a gunboat. Its generic in nature, although with a few (too many?) Melik influences. it is, however, supposed to be a fairly nondescript 1880s screw river boat with some impromptu armour and handy spots in which to mount the odd 7pdr or a Nordenfelt.

The hull is balsa, which allowed me to stain the deck. The rest is heavy duty card and paper, with thin balsa sheet offcuts to represent timber cladding. The ship is a "work in progress", and I hope to add to the general clutter on her decks as the months go on. I now have plans for a smaller, more "scruffy" sidewheeler, which should be on the stocks around about Christmas time.

A Beginning

I suppose I've come quite late to the world of wargaming blogging. The very fact that I'm here I guess is down to Steve Blease and his excellent "Bleaseworld" blog, plus some comemnts and questions on TMP regarding my Sudan project. So, at long last, here it is. I'll aim to chronicle the development of my various wargaming projects, the main one just now being the protozoan set of rules that gives this blog its name - Don't Throw Bloody Spears At Me (hmm, abbreviates to DBA, I wonder if that'll work?) and the various 15mm armies (and riverine csquadrons) that I'm assembling to fight out the campaigns surrounding the rise and fall of the Mahdi and his followers. I've said it that way since I have a hankering to expand to cover not only the Sudan and Egypt, but also Abyssinia, and the Italian and French forays in the region. Still, that is far in the future amd for now I have to satisfy myself with British, Egyptian and Sudanese (plus a few Indians - must remember the Suakin front!). So, to kick off, a few pictures of the mahdist horde in and around their encampments on the Nile - your intrepid correspondent hopes to have pictures from Sir Garnet's camp in the not-too-distant future!

The fort is made from foam core with the card front peeled away. The resulting surface makes a decent sand stone wall effect when painted and stained.